another Hocank/Helmbrecht article question

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote:
[Example from text in Lipkind, retranscribed and analyzed.]
> ku'=niNk=(g)a, [hiaN'c^=ha=ra  ware=hu'= iNgigi'           ]=ra
> o grandmother   father  my DEF work come he made me his own  DEF
>
> tuuxu'ruk=    s^aNnaN.
> I finished it DEC
>
> Grandmother, I have finished the [work for which my father sent me
> here].
>
> CR:  This one looks to me like a clear example of something preceding
> the head -- ware 'work' certainly seems to be the head, as John said,
> unless the gloss is somehow misleading.  (By the way, John -- I don't
> see why this would be "strictly speaking a noun clause" ... what do
> you mean?)

I meant that perhaps it might be interpreted as

I finished [I do ...]

but, looking at it again, no, of course not.  I was confused.

> CR: So this example, assuming head = ware, seems to argue for a
> head-internal structure.
...
> JEK:  And, if I am correctly anticipating the next step, we can argue
> that the determiner itself is not the head if we can show that it is
> optional.
>
> ##Huh?  Sorry, John.  You've lost me here.  My fault, probably!
> Actually, I might well claim that the determiner (the clause-final one) IS
> the head in the sense that the whole construction is a DP.  But that's not
> the one Johannes is saying is optional, I think (???) And this is a
> different "head" than the nominal head of a relative ...

What I meant was that if we are trying to show that the clauses are
internally headed, then, having demonstrated that the nouns are within the
clauses we have to protect against the next argument, which is that the
nouns are not the heads, but, rather, the determiners are.
Unfortunately, we've just used the externality of the post-clausal
determiners to support the claim that the nouns (not adjacent to them) are
internal.  (I deleted that phase of the argument, so refer back to the
original if needed.)  So, I offer to counter that analysis by claiming
that the determiners are only present if needed, and that when the clause
is not definite or deictically indicated (or its head isn't), then the
determiner is absent.  Or, in short, the determiner is not the head, it is
outside the head and modifying it.  If it is a head, it's the head of some
higher level entity, not the clause.

JEK